Reflection of Year 2010

Prologue:

Ok, it’s again the time of the year for reflection and some resolutions… :) Not my favorite part of year-end, but I guess I have to do this still… Say, as a gift for the “future Me” when she is old and want to know what she did when she was 23.

Start of Rewind:

I started the year wishing everyone a happy new year from a hotel in Taiwan with a bunch of best friends :)

Back to Singapore & work life, I took an interview for a new project within the bank, and I got in with PMO role. Not long after that, I received my very first promotion (and increment) after being with the bank for almost 2 years. I remember how I was so anxious about the promotion, much more than the bonus and increment.

CNY came and I went back to hometown for a fantastic family gathering. All my bro and sis (and their partner and their kids) are back home, and the home was merrier than ever. I can’t remember when was the last time we had this kind of reunion :)

Marching to march, I was sent to Germany for one week training on my new role. Well, I doubt that I learnt a lot about PMO in that short one week, but being in the head quarter definitely boasted my motivation and passion to perform (grin)

Right on April Fool, I declared being in relationship again :) Yes, I have fallen for him :) The theme song for Romeo and Juliet was playing on my mind “Love me, Love me, Say that you love me; Fool me, fool me, go on and fool me”…

May was a wonderful and hectic month. It was wonderful for parent’s visit & gathering, and hectic due to the house searching. Still remember how high all the offered rentals and those bossy owners. Duh!

June marks my move to Queenstown, which is conveniently located 15 minutes from my office. It also marks my first trip to India, where I traveled non-stop 9 hours in a car from Benguluru to Kanur for a friend wedding (and passed him a bottle of vodka under the table)

(OK I shall fast forward for the next half of the year)

July marks my first time to Philippines, August marks the independence days for Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore (wakakak), September marks the family trip to Japan, October marks my return trip to India, while November and December have been a peaceful month with a short trip back to hometown for holiday :)

End of Rewind.

Epilogue:
Whenever I wrote year-end reflection, I always feel that the particular year has been the most amazing year of my life, and start to be worried as I don’t have anything like that to look forward next year. Well, it turns out that I should just enjoy the present and let the rest flow by itself :)

Anyway, I’m still really scared of next year (sorry!). The year of my zodiak is coming up, and it’s a belief that you have to be extra careful, as it might be the toughest year of the 12 years cycle. Oh well, wish me luck!

And now… I’m ready to announce my New Year’s resolution: To be a healthier person! Here are the points to substantiate the statement:
1. Limit myself to 1 KFC / month & 1 Buffet / Quarter
2. Exercise (jogging / badminton / gym) at least 4 times a month
3. Participate in 10 KM run
4. Reduce Overtime… No more mails after 9PM!

Last but not least… a collection of 23 pictures to represent the 23-years old me :p

Framing 2010 – Main Pic credit to Helios. PS CS5 credit to Winson.

Embracing to the last day of the year,
ED

Merry Xmas!

After a decent dinner at Bukit Gombak during the Christmas Eve, we proceed to Teck Whye for the whole night card games. Seems like Teck Whye has unanimously declared as our new headquarter :p

There were 3 games available... but we only managed to played two: Saboteurs and Loot. It was lots of fun… we can’t stop laughing and making jokes… lucky that there was no one else in the house (except for Poor Julianto who was trying to get some rest and recover), otherwise we would have been kicked out. We played until around 1AM, then take train back home. Thanks to MRT late night extension, we didn’t have to try looking for taxi :)


Saboteurs: One of the rare times when Miners (good people) actually won

The next day, I slept like a pig until around 11.30 AM. My friend from Medan texted me, saying that her friend is currently in Singapore and she wants me to pass her iPhone to her friend… So I contacted her friend… and she wanted to meet at Sentosa.

Sentosa during Christmas was a nightmare for a courier like me. The 10 minutes waiting time for inbound train to Sentosa wasn’t bad… After passing the package to her, I had to queue for the outbound… which took me 55 mins! When I wanted to take a picture of how long the queue was, my SD card was suddenly spoilt. Ah! What a luck :(


Queue for Sentosa Monorail - after 30 Minutes.

In the end, I was late half an hour for the KTV session T_T. Without further ado, I start with some food, while most of the group were still singing :p Kudos to Henry for organizing the KTV and buffet session :) The time passed quickly… it was 10pm before anyone realized it. After taking some pictures at Marina Square, we went back home.


Marina Square, after the KTV + Buffet Session

The next day, most of us went for Badminton to redeem ourselves from all the calories we had during Christmas. After the 2 hours badminton session, we had lunch at Sumo House, Clementi, which served the best value-for-money Japanese lunch. Where else can you get a full lunch set meal for 2.9 SGD? On top of that, they have free flow of Green Tea…. And since we all look like students (with all those freebies t-shirt), they gave us couple of plates of chicken teriyaki… for free!! Man I don’t know how they make money.

Here is the website incase anyone interested. This is too good to be kept secret :p

Back home, I did my weekly laundry and room chores. Now I’m just playing some Restaurant City while waiting for dinner time to come :)

OK, I desperately need Adobe Photoshop for my Mac :(
ED

Christmas Eve!

Happy Birthday to my dear roomie!! Christmas Eve’s Girl! Haha… Doesn’t it feel good when people around the world are actually celebrating your birthday every year? :) Even 2 months before the birthday, people will start putting decoration, giving discount, planning for celebration… this year, most of the offices are even giving a whole day leave on 24th Dec.

Unfortunately, my office is not in the list of those compaines v_v but I was enjoying myself earlier :) People are distributing candies and chocholate all days long… and no one seems to really be working anyway :p Later at around 3PM, our Managing Director actually sent an email to us and said that we can leave at 4PM for Christmas Eve. Yay! I love you, MD! Hehe…I went out from office as the clock hit 4pm.

Back at home, i was addicted to the new game in iPhone: "Cause of Death COD". Its the digital version of something similar to "Goosebump pick your own adventure". I love the way EA made the graphic. Sharp and nice. Best thing? it doesn't require internet connection throughout the game.. so you can play it without disturbance in mrts :)

Now is 5.30 PM... the weather outside looks like it's going to rain pretty hard... but I never see Christmas eve in rain before... and I believe the cloud will go off somehow :)

Ok, time to prepare myself to go to the west for a dinner and some gathering :) After that, I will find some time trying to understand my Macbook better.


Pink Theme Christmas @ Taka

Happy Holiday, everyone!
ED

2 Days to Christmas

I went to Sakuraya, Anchor point for a fulfilling lunch; and pizzahut, Sakuraya, for a splendid Cheesy7 pizza for dinner. I have no right to ask why my weight just kept going up T_T I feel ‘slightly’ guilty when I back from the dinner, knowing that I will have another big buffet coming this Saturday. But well, it’s Christmas! Time to rejoice! :p

Anyway, rejoice was all I did for the rest of the week in office :p

17 – 23 Dec

I think I can summarize this week in office into one short paragraph. Time for long lunch, catching up, and having some fun in office =) Boss, Big Boss, and Big Big Boss are on leave, and even my colleagues have all disappeared in the week of 20 Dec. Trust me, this is the best season not to take leave. You are having holiday in the office anyway :)

Of course, there were still some calls to be attended, as apparently none of my Germany colleagues are taking leaves. The work for the week is more on preparing some year-end report, cleaning up some documents, and planning for 2011. All these are completed faster since there was no phone which kept ringing every 5 minutes or so.

And surprisingly, I wake up early everyday and reached office at around 8.15 AM =.=’ That’s how people are, I guess. Like when I was a kid, it was very tough for me to wake up for school; but when weekend came; I could wake up as early as 6AM to catch some animes. I spent peaceful time in office and left before 7pm. One of those rare moments where I can actually see some sunlight when I left!

My big boss was actually returned to office on Tuesday (despite him being on leave until next monday) and he called me up to his office. I was already having a bad mood that he is going to give me some work... but then... he presented some gift instead! A Tea Towel from Australia. Thank you so much :D And I am one of the first people to choose from bunch of designs. Yay~

I guess I enjoyed the time to the max… and I’m much more recharged for a new battle in 2011. Thanks for those who actually start the trend of taking leaves on Christmas :p

On Saturday, I went to Bugis for a meet up with Citra and Ari :) We had lunch at Soup Spoon, dessert at Shaw Tower, then walked to Funan to get some cloths for my macbook pro (read: protector)


Cit and I @ Funan

And oh! I went to Singtel on Sunday and complained about my iPhone’s home button being not so responsive.. Guess what, they did an one-to-one exchange for me!! Right on the spot. I was totally stunned. It was 11 months 5 days on my warranty and they gave me a new phone! And they give me additional 3 months warranty for that :) Thanks Singtel for the Christmas Gift.

After that, Winson and I went to watch Rapunzel at Cineplex… It was amazing how Disney have improvised from the original version of the story. I love the movie a lot. Handsome prince and lovely princess~ Thanks Winson for the movie treat :) It was a weekend nicely spent!


Love the movie~

To be continued,
ED

3 Days to Christmas

This is my first time went to a Christmas celebration at a church… and I must say that I quite enjoyed it :) The church is located near Braddell MRT, and I reached there just nice before the performance started at 8PM. That day the performance was about a true story from one of the followers, of how she found peace despite all the incidents happened to her. I guessed it’s true that people will be strong, so long as he / she has some hope.

After the performance, I was invited for the supper. Oh my… the supper was beyond my expectation. This was the best spread I ever see (for, er, free supper). They have everything from éclair to rojak. After having some food and chit chat, I left at 10.30PM. Thanks Maria for the invitation :)


A very well organized church performance :)

The same day, I went for a 3 hours lunch at ORQ (I hope no one from my office read this T_T). One of my previous colleagues came back from HK, and I just missed her so much. She didn’t change a bit, even though my other AM friends have transformed quite a lot. They all look like professional working ladies now. I told them of what am I up too, but it seems like IT and front office just differ too much. The only IT team they know is the IT helpdesk =.='

It has been a while since the last time I went to ORQ... and gosh it has changed so much. There is now a link to MBFC... which stands for Marina Bay Financial Center (only knows about it after doing a quick search) and there are lots of new restaurants already operating, comparable to those restaurants in malls.


The ladies @ Paradise Inn, MBFC

Oh right, before I closed the blog, I shall continue with a short overdue story…

12 – 16 Dec

These were the remaining period where I actually “work” in office. After the go-live, I had to be on stand-by on Sunday, just in case they need to arrange some call. Monday was the last day before my boss went for a long leave, so I tried my best to get clarifications for all the pending items. I think I pressed him too much, because in the end, he quietly run away when I was on conference call =.=’’.. That was unfair! But he was kind enough to still pick my call… even until the time before he actually boarded the plane. Heh.

For the rest of the week, I was busy with coordination for IT Stakeholder Forum, presenting for the first time (to around 50 unknown people on the call), and run the last team call before Christmas. Thursday was the last day where I had to stay late… and things only gets better after that :)

And oh, I baptized my Macbook Pro on 12 Dec. It was born on 31 Nov… but due to all the holiday and craziness in office, I only unboxed it on 12 Dec.


Macbook Pro 13", SGD 1,680.97

And (looking at the calendar) it has been 12 days since baptism, I’m still struggling to do something as simple as locking a screen T_T If you notice something weird in the blog (funny picture color and sizes and font), blame it to my Macbook Pro! Hehe. Ok, I’m learning... I will learn to understand you T_T

To be continued,
ED

4 Days to Christmas

I intended to cover more story in my previous post… unfortunately I was addicted reading online manga “My Barbaric Girlfriend” and the time was 1 AM when I finished it T_T

So here come the 3 most critical days of the year for my project (and the 3 worst days of the month for me :p)

9 – 11 Dec

After the one-week break, I went to office at 8AM on Thursday and tried to clear my 300+ mails. I met some people in the pantry and they were all asking why was I coming back where the battlefield was so hot. Yes, it was 3 days before going live, where all the actions and escalations were at the max level. Even before I could skim through all the mails, the migration team lead already asked me for a meeting and dictated all the calls I have to chair and minute for the next 3 days. Still lost in the sea of information, my bosses came and start to tell me what are all the financial deadlines we have for the next 3 days.

At that time, I wish I could split myself like the flu viruses that were happily living inside me. I tried to explain the conflict of priorities I have, but they insisted both are equally important. Oh well. For those 3 days, I pronounced the office as my first home. Calls, meetings, reports, escalation, follow up… I couldn't tell the difference between lunch and dinner anymore. Everything went so fast… until the H date.


Friday Team Lunch @ Hosted. The only time I had food other than Pizza for that week

Sat, 11 Dec. I could hardly sleep the night before. It seemed like even my boss had had enough of it. There were 3 meetings to be chaired that day, and he requested me to handle all. I was already not in a very good mood, for the 8 AM meeting has been changed to 11 AM and he didn’t tell me a single thing about it. I slept at 2 AM the day before, OK. Would have really appreciated it if he can at least tell me that the meeting got rescheduled based on the 3AM call :(

Anyway, the rest of the day went fine…. After the 2PM call, it was confirmed that we went live successfully :D

Bottles of champagne were popped in Abu Dhabi and Singapore. It was a joyful moment where everyone was cheering like never before, despite deprived from sleep for the last few weeks. I’m impressed with their spirits. Suddenly, I felt embarrassed of being so calculative for all the additional work… where the rest have been giving their best without being grumpy at all. Well… can I blame this one to the woman’s emotion-dominated nature? :p


The Champagne, the celebration

The meeting room, the home of many for many weeks

I went off from office at around 6PM and then went to the west for early Christmas celebration with friends :) Oh how I missed them… I had the yummiest black pepper KFC, then followed by card games along with some snacks and log cake :)


The Black Pepper KFC, my own way of celebration :)


The gathering @ Teck Whye

That wasn’t my typical disturb-less gathering. I got so many calls and have to snatch Tomy’s laptop to login to office so many times. But I’m still glad that I didn’t miss it totally. To be honest, I normally felt very restless if I have to receive office call when I am not in the office. That time around, I continued playing card the minute I end the call. Maybe I have improved my ignorance strength.

Alright, the go-live mark the end of all the climax... and things were getting (slightly) better afterwards :)

To be continued,
ED

5 Days to Christmas

See, it’s true that happy time travels fast. I was so looking forward to Dec in previous post, and now everyone starts to count down to Christmas and New Year. Yuck! I’m not ready for New Year resolution and reflection time!

Anyway, lets rewind of what happened after I left Changi.

1 - 8 Dec

I reached Medan smoothly at around 8.30PM. Picked up by my brother-in-law, he then started to pamper me with local foods: Nasi Padang and Sate Padang (should I put the pic? No I shouldn’t, I will start drooling myself). After the fulfilling dinner and nice chat with my sister, I went to sleep.

The next day, I took the morning cab (5AM) back to my home sweet home. Reached back home at around 9.30 AM, just in time for brunch before lunch :p The next couple of days in hometown were spent eating, napping, chit-chatting, nagging, watching Taiwanese series 夜市人生 (the direct translation will be “The Night Market Life”), and… guess what? Reading comics! Huahahaha (contented with myself) One of my cousins opened a comic rental business and I… supported her by grabbing free comics home :p


A comic fan never grows up

After the nice holiday in hometown, I went to Medan for shopping, meeting up friends, and of course, attending a wedding ceremony of my cousins :)


Liza & Anita @ Black Canyon Cafe, Cambridge, Medan :p


The groom and the bride!

Everything was perfect… until…


The unexpected SMS

I received a text message from Jetstar that my Thursday morning flight got cancelled. The next flight is Friday night. I supposed to be in the office on Thursday morning! It startled me for a while really.

Backtrack a bit, I was actually taking leave only until Wednesday, even though my flight schedule was Thursday morning. My initial plan was to pretend that my “Wed’s flight got cancelled” and hence taking the “Thursday morning flight” and be in office “2 hours late”.

Now… my flight really got cancelled and I don’t know what to do. I can’t call and tell my boss that “sorry my Wed flight is cancelled and the next flight is Fri night.. so I see you next Monday!”… I will get killed.

In the end… I make a heart breaking decision to change my flight to one day ahead… Wednesday night… and skipped the wedding dinner :’( Hate you, Jetstar! I should have booked Silkair I guess… it was SGD 30 difference but I never though about this risk… oh well.. maybe it’s just my karma because I have the intention to lie to my boss T_T

Me not attending the party wasn’t the end of the story. After my family sent me to airport (then they proceed to wedding reception.. urgggg), I actually checked in and get into the aircraft. Guess what? The flight was delayed for 70 minutes!!! I was stucked in my seat while my family were in Taipan enjoying their sumptuous food… I must have done some bad karma, really T_T

Anyway, I touched down Singapore at 12.00 AM, get into the taxi with 50% surcharge, and reached my place at almost 1 AM on Thursday. It wasn’t the perfect holiday, but wait ... the worst is yet to come!

To be continued,
ED

PS: A tempting food picture to add to my sin list

Uda Sayang, Medan

Hellow Changi!

It has been quite a while since the last time I blogged before flying off :) Either I was running late, or I had tough decision to pick between airport lounge and free internet.

Changi, as always, has decorated itself with Christmasy stuff. Joyful music is playing all around (as I'm typing, "Let's it snow" is playing in the background)...

In another 3 hours, I will be in Medan :D In another 24 hours, I will be at my hometown :D :D... Such a different mood now compared with 12 hours ago. Yup, this holiday didn't come easy for me. I was in office until 5am in the morning. I'm totally not proud of this... but I don't know why it's so hard for me to just hit the log-off button and leave everything behind... Maybe I'm just selfish. I want zero all from office during my holiday. I don't want my boss to call and ruin my mood for the next 10 days... :p

Apparantly, one of my team member in Germany can't stand it... I don't know if he was irritated or pitying me... but after my mail at 5am in the morning, he pinged me and begged me to go home. He promised to take care of the things while I'm away... oh well T_T I hope I didn't just insult him... :( I definetely didn't mean to say that I don't trust them... Thanks guys, for all the well wishes :)

Back home, an DHL delivery note was waiting for me. Yes, it's for the delivery of... *drumroll please* Macbook Pro!! my very first Mac :D Unfortunately it was an unsuccessful delivery notification T_T Huh.. It supposed to come on the next day... when they suddenly deliver it one day it advance T_T

The next day, I slept until 10am, woke up, called DHL, took lunch, then wait patiently for the Macbook Pro to be delivered at 3pm. Hahaha.. Amazing how I spent one day of my leave just for a Macbook Pro delivery XD... Only after I got the package, I realized that it's 3pm and I haven't packed a single thing! So there I go... After one hour packing my luggage (or throwing things to bag) and my old laptop, I leave for Changi.

I don't really know what I have packed, but I stopped 5 times to rest only to drag it from doorstep to MRT. The MRT was surprisingly crowded... at the timing of 4.30PM? I don't understand... people leave office that early? I think I have been going through Romusa without knowing it.

So I reached airport at 5.30 PM :) The check in and all are pretty painless (my luggage was 23KG!)... As I have time until 7.30, I decided to log in on the free 15 mins and note down some stuff :D Now that the 15 mins almost gone, time for some light shopping & photos before flight.

Wish everyone a nice holiday month ahead!
ED

2010 Holiday Mood: ON

December has such a magic spell. Doesn’t matter if I don’t celebrate Christmas, but this month gives me the weekend feeling everyday. Amazing isn’t it. Topped up with the dazzling decorations, mind blowing sales, and code-freeze period in office, I don’t see any reason not to celebrate :)

This week comes and goes in god speed. Now is already 6 pm of this sunny Sunday when I noticed that I haven't written anything for the week. Well, my week in office is normal. I just remember a lot of numbers and horrible reconciliations. All thanks to year end T_T Amidst all these fuss and mess around financial, my boss suddenly decided to cancel his trip to Abu Dhabi. I was wondering if it’s because of me (e.g. being too dependent on him and can’t do anything without his guidance), and was really thankful that it wasn’t the case. He needs to take care of his kids as his wife won’t be around. Family is his highest priority after all. I wish I can be someone like that one day :) To forgo 2 weeks of company-covered trip to an exotic place like that… I think I will be in bad mood for at least 2 days. But he just took it like nothing happened.

On Friday, I bought something that I have been longing for years. Macbook Pro! And oh the process was so not cool :( I filled in my particular and clicked “Buy”… then it went to processing screen for one second… and then the browser went off!!! I didn’t even have a chance to see the word ‘successful’ or ‘thank you’. Just when I was about to give another try, I received an email saying that I have purchased the laptop. Huh. The perfectionism in me was screaming for a repeat. But it was 2am in the morning on the black Friday day… I decided to conclude and go to dreamland.

On Saturday, I slept until.. 11 am. Then did my monthly house chores, had a quick lunch, and went for badminton session at Jurong West at 3pm. After the badminton, I came back, showered, and went for a date at Bugis. I had my sinful KFC for dinner T_T now feel guilty about it… but no regret! Haha… We watched Social Network before going to sleep… The movie was all words, but surprisingly good enough to keep me engaged at 1am in the morning.

On Sunday, I did my part time job as mover at Bukit Gombak :p Inche and the gank are moving… one to Boon Lay, another one to Bishan. They did a good job in finding rooms. Th new place looks great. I had fun doing the move… and decided to take some pictures for memory. The guys were screaming like mad when I took their picture in the back of the lorry. Hahaha!


Bunch of NTU grads doing their part time job :p (Now I will get killed)

After the move, we had lunch at the food court nearby, then come back home. It was a long journey from Bishan to Queenstown :( I hope we can still meet up frequently despite the distance…

Once home, the sleepiness wave hit me quite bad. I decided to take a shower and phoned home. Guess what, I got my spirit back! :D I then continue playing some games, browse some websites, send some mail… and get ready for some dinner :p

3 more days to Medan! :)
ED

Day by Day

The remaining days of work last week were quite painful. Thursday is the official stay-late day, and Friday…. All thanks to the reporting deadline, I was stuck in the office until 12am. The best thing? My boss called me on Saturday morning complaining the way I did the report. I felt sorry and puzzled at the same time. I had done it like that for the past 3 months… and he just asked me about it now? ~.~ Anyway, I’m expecting him to give me a big blast tomorrow… so let see.

The call bothered me for one hour. And that’s it. I managed to get the work out from my mind, went out to MidPoint for dinner @ Jtown cafe & have a walk around orchard. The Christmas decoration is up and I forgot to bring my camera T_T I definitely need to go there once more time for the Christmas tree hunting!

On Sunday morning, I went swimming with roomie. We reached there at 8.30 and the sun was bright as 12pm’s sun. There was no one around until around 9.30 and I broke my own record today! It’s 20 laps!! The max I did last time was 15… I have my roomie to thanks for her patience and support :) hehe..

After the exercise, we went for lunch, then came back home. I was pretty idled for an hour… then I decided to go to Suntec for some gift shopping :) Managed to get a shirt for my dad, a toy for my niece, choc, accessories, thumbdrive, etc for myself :p Mission accomplished!

In the evening, I went to313 Somerset and had dinner at Handburger. It was quite a nice place, and the burger is good too. The waiters served non-stop plain water, so you don’t have to bother about ordering some drinks (cheapskate mode on)


Handburger - Chicken Caesar Burger

Ok, by the count of food pictures I posted every week, I can’t complain why my scale never go down T_T

Time for some movie before sleep! :)
ED

Travel Back in Time

It’s funny how Facebook makes you aware of your age.

Couple of year’s back, all I saw in my friends’ pic is gatherings, school, and fun. Nowadays, all I see is office, holiday, and pre-wed pictures. Couples more years down the road; I will see baby pictures filling my facebook page.

All these make me feel that time travels too fast and I want to stop it! I felt nostalgic all in sudden, and decided to dig out some proves that I was teenager once.

I look at the pictures I took in high school, the website and yearbook I designed…
I look at the millions picture I took during undergrad, the poster, the banner, the screenshot, the for-fun photo editing…


Class website, donkey's years ago


for-fun photo editing... during Death Note Fever


keeping screenshot of everything! This was taken during my 2006 B'day I guess.

And then I realized…

It was a big mistake to look back T_T I’m just confirming that I’m old. I don’t have the energy, passion, and appreciation like what I used to have. I wasn’t as narcissist as what I used to be…

…

And what have I gotten in return? I don’t know… But I know that I would never be able to return to the past anyway… so I’m glad that I digitalized enough stuff to be reminisced once in a while :p

And for those of you who is on your high school / undergrad now, enjoy the best time of your life :) Like what people always said, you will only be 21 once (quote from movie: 21)

Back to present: Yay! It's time for dinner! :D
ED

The Pleasant Mid-Week Break

Yesterday, one of my colleagues just came and burst his frustration to me. “I can’t stand working with him! Yesterday, boss was asking us to do the report today. Then he acted smart doing OT and finished it yesterday. Today the boss is asking questions about the report and I totally have no idea what the hell he has done… such a pain”

Of course, this is just one among hundreds of complain I have ever heard… but this specific one somehow knocked me quite hard. I have been working with 6 teams so far and I guess I have been the same painful person for all of them. I didn’t do it for the credit, I just want to help my team members... as my own way to thank them for their guidance so far. However, it turns out that it I don't really feel appreciated... even by the bosses around... and now I understand why.

Moral of the story? I don’t know... maybe do not scarify your life for something you’re not asked for… People might not appreciate that… or even worse, they might hate you because of that T_T I just realized how lousy I'm in this kind of relationship. Is this what we called office politic?

Ok, reflection aside, I had good time on this Wednesday off. On holiday eve, we celebrated Inche’s birthday at Bali Thai, West Mall. The dinner was at 7.30, but I arrived at 9.30pm... T_T I had a super bad luck with cab at that time. 4 people took over my potential cab. 4 CAB! And then I called 4 cab companies… all of them attended to me, give me 10 mins of music, then cut me off saying there is no cab around the area. !@#$@$. 4 CAB COMPANIES! Why cabs are such rare stuff? Maybe I should try the cab business also. Oh wait, I can’t drive.

Anyway, It was really sweet of them to order some fried rice for me. I was hungry and hence didn’t get a chance to take a pic of it, but it was nice :) After the dinner, we celebrated Inche’s B’day, and then went to McD for dessert and played Bang! Card game. It was a really fun game… It’s kind of similar to the police & thief card game that I knew off, but this has so much variation that you can really make your own sheriff story for each game. Our first and only game went on for 2 hours, and the story ended with Sheriff about to raise white flag, where suddenly the dynamite exploded and killed the Renegade. Good show, Fendi!


Happy Birthday, Che!


My Bang! Player Card

I didn’t manage to catch the last MRT, so Rina and I shared a taxi. Back home, I wasn't sleepy, so I continued watching “Just My Luck” (which was cut in the middle last week due to one and half hour black out). I slept at around 2.30 after the movie. Oh... if only luck can change that easily...

Wednesday, I woke up at 9.30 am, rolled until around 10 am, then got some breakfast before went out for lunch (note: the time difference between the meal was really slim) I met up with Tine, and then we went to Coffee Club for lunch. I never know the place served such a good lunch! I’m definitely coming back next time :) After the lunch, we went to watch Megamind :) Nice movie! And prior to that, there is a trailer to a Thai movie, which is so funny that I think I have to watch it! The movie title is “Hello Stranger”, shot in Korea. For those interested, you can watch the trailer from youtube :) It’s from the same producer as “Bangkok Traffic Love Story”, which trailer was awesome as well. Thai has such a brilliant taste in ads and movies. They played people emotion really well. Thumbs up!


Yongky’s Baby Pork Ribs. Must.Have.It.Next.Time


First Shrek, then Megamind. I wonder why dreamworks animation like to put ugly character as hero :p

We went to Kinokuniya @ Taka after the movie. Initially intended to get some book, but the queue was so long that we decided to come back other day. All because of the 3-days 20% off event. Sigh.

At night, I watched “21”, which is a movie about blackjack. I watched it half, then realized that it’s a 2 hours long movie! Decided to cut in to two part :)

11.30 PM now, time to sleep and embracing my Mon.. wait.. it’s Thursday tmrw!

PS: Penny from Big Bang Theory disappears on two episodes due to horsing incidents! Finally the mystery unveiled.

Happy Hari Raya Haji :)
ED

Shrek the Ogre

I had a weird dream this week.

It was a farewell lunch at vivo. My farewell lunch. My colleagues from past teams and departments were there. We’re talking about the fun and sour we had during the past two years. One of them asked me “So, where are you going next?” I mentioned one of the small IT firm, and they suddenly looked at me in puzzlement. “What make you decided to move there? We hardly heard about it before. Did they pay you better?” My heart throbbed. I can’t remember the reason that I moved there. The only thing I remember is that the new company is 10 mins nearer than my current workplace. My current workplace suddenly seems better in every other aspect. Suddenly I realized that I have made a terrible mistake, but it was already my last day… and I have no chance to turn back time…

Then I wake up. Then I recalled and felt thankful that I hadn’t submitted any resignation letter after all. Haha.. I know I have been complaining quite a lot about my work, but now I know for sure that I don’t have the gut to give up anything yet. Not now :)

On Friday, I had a small BBQ gathering with my previous department. The last meet up was almost a year back… and it took me some time to remember some names (blush). Yet, I feel attached to the department. Everyone is as friendly as before :) Too bad some of my previous managers can’t make it as they were on holiday :( It was the healthiest BBQ I ever had. They barbequed marshmallow, pineapple, paprika, mushroom, asparagus, sweet potatoes, sweet corn. I can’t find any sausage nor crab stick there.. which is like the must have for my typical economical BBQ :p Thankfully they were still considering the carnivore like me, and had some chicken wings & chicken chop. Phew.


AMGTO @ Casuarina Cove

Saturday, Winson went back to Medan, and I suddenly didn't know what to do. Haha.. I slept until 12pm, then did my bi-weekly cleaning, called home, surfed some net, then went for a dinner with Ven, Nata, & Peko. Just Acia is such a wonderful place for gathering & chitchat. Most of the food comes with free flow of drinks & ice cream. You can even order some tofu and sit there for the whole evening (which we did :p) The drinks come in lots of variety from soft drink until hot chocolate and cappuccino. The food is not very special (still edible), but it’s really value for money :D We started at 6.30 pm and went off after being hushed away at around 10pm. It’s nice to hear what everyone is up to. Some is pretty much up to stock & trade, some is on travel, and some is on beauty & cosmetic :p


Just Acia, Marina Square

Sunday, I went for Badminton at Clementi. This is my second time… and my elbow didn’t ache as bad. We played happily until around 12pm… then a heavy rain come all in sudden. Alas, none of us brought umbrella. We waited for half and hour… and since the rain still didn’t stop, we decided to cross the rain. After lunch at the kopitiam, we went to Pioneer to help Handy moving to his new room. His previous owner wants to take back the room, so he searched for another room near by. Well, the new one is really near. It’s 5 minutes walk from the old one, and closer to MRT. All of us have some fun during the moving, and went home after that.

Back home, the weather was still gloomy and really tempting me to sleep. I decided to overcome it by doing some ironing and then watching some movie… which work quite well :D

Sooo! My achievement of this week is… the completion of Shrek’s movies! Yay :D I first knew about Shrek 3 years ago, when I went to the Universal Studio in LA. I didn’t know it that well back then, but it was one of the few characters which I took picture with.


Shrek: 2007 @ Universal Studio, LA, 2009 @ Warner Bros, Gold Coast

I watched the first Shrek movie on my flight to India. After that I started to get addicted, and got the remaining of the movies from my roomie (Thanks roomie!) Now I have completed all of them… I must say that I really like the movie… but I still feel that Orge is ugly ^^; I don’t understand how can people be crazy about them & buy its merchandise. I rather buy mickey mouse or some princess accessories :p hee :p

Ok.. 7.30pm now.. finally, time to eat! Gosh, I was hungry since 5pm.
ED

Food, food, and food!

Noo! Long weekend is coming to an end!!

I have myself to blame T_T I went to office on Saturday, breaking the long-weekend spirit v_v I didn’t regret it though… By a glance on my Monday’s meeting calendar, I know I won’t have time to do anything… Still, mbosses don’t like it if I go to office on Saturday and be so kiasu, so I did my stuff and saved everything as draft rather then sending it out straight away (since when working has become such a taboo stuff?) Everything went fine, until when I finished drafting the last email and hit…. “Send” instead of “Draft”. Oh my!! T_T I’m bad in hiding stuff these days.

I stayed in office for around 5 hours, then went home and got ready for dinner. Saturday’s Agenda is dinner with Rin2 and Ryoma =D It’s funny how we stayed so close but never have dinner together before. We went to Holland Village & picked “Everything with fries” for dinner. Being a sister company, it does have the same ambiance with “Awfully Chocolate”. The food is quite good… but the place was way too noisy! We can hardly talk to each other without screaming. I ate the Chicken Cutlet sandwich, and each of us picked a different type of fries. I love the garlic & curry the best :D


Rin2’s Lamb Chop & Nyummy Curry Fries

After the dinner, we went back to their place and I learnt to play bridge. It was an awesome game! How come I miss it all these years? Helios, being the expert, can’t stop deducting and making plan. On the contrary, I, being the noob, can’t stop wanting to finish my card and move on to the next game… My cards were all bad and I lost 3 out of 3 plays v_v Will try my luck again next time!

Back to home, I received an email from the owner of Strathmore. Well, I sent an email to her earlier to inform about the air-con cleaning, she then replied with a thank you and ask how we are doing. We said we settled down & like the place quite a lot. Winson said I shouldn’t have said that T_T she will now increase the rent. Haha! Let’s see :P But I did enjoy staying in the current place… :D

The next morning, despite my aching arm & leg from previous badminton session, I still went for swimming. It was a nice swim after almost 2 months of pause. After the swim, we went to Tiong Bahru Food Center for lunch. I was astonished by the variety of food there. Another heaven after my 6 years in Singapore.

I went for the Hui Ji Yong Tau Fu, which was graded as the best noodle by ieat :p Helios went for Shark Lor Me, which was super nyummy as well. On top of that, we tried the Ghim Moh Chwee Kueh. Nyummyy =D Those are calories worth spent! Thanks Helios for being our tour guide! :D Will definitely come back again for the food!

Back to home, the lunch effect started to kick in and I felt sleepy… I was almost asleep an hour ago, when I received my phone bill for this month…


Singtel Bill for Nov 2010

It went to a freaking SGD 262.28!!

It knocked off my earlier record of SGD120 when I back from Taiwan. Sigh. Blame it to my boss! He called me for an hour when I was in India T_T Now I will get this reimburse no matter what happen!
Enjoying the typical Sunday,
ED

Happy Deepavali!

Happy Deepavali for those who celebrated it... and happy holiday for everyone! :) This long weekend came as quite a surprise for me. With additional one more holiday on 17th, Nov is becoming my favorite month!

After the office’s incident last week, I think & think on how to fulfill my boss's order & not neglecting my work at the same time. So I decided to try this: Go to office early. From Monday to Thursday, every morning, I fought to wake up and go to office by 8.30 AM. I’m quite amazed that the thing actually works for me. Office was so quite that I can concentrate better. No phone call as the rest of the world is still asleep. No queue on the coffee machine. And by the time people starts coming in, you got your day planned out.

I manage to leave before 8 PM on Monday and Tuesday, but there was calls up to 10pm on Wed and Thurs, so I stayed in the office anyway. I have no energy at all when the clock hit 9pm and I literally just brushed through the calls. I never felt as tired as this week... guess there is still some tweaking to be done (Sigh). Why does my boss like to make things more challenging for me v_v

Anyway! Friday morning, I had my first badminton session in CCK. Despite all my limitation in serving and forehand, I enjoyed the game a lot :D Thanks to all of my shifus around! I can hardly type now as my hands are all numb T_T My weekly Yoga session did contribute to this, too.

I have just watched 3 Glee episodes continuously and started to get impatience. It’s 9th episodes and the two pregnancy lies are still lingering around. Argh! In the end I decided to ask auntie Wiki for the complete story line... and she told me everything I need to know, for Glee season 1. Now I can go to sleep peacefully :p

Heat wave is coming again!
ED

Gathering!

It has been a while since the last time I had a decent gathering. Earlier, I was always not around when they planned for gathering =.=’’

Special thanks to Bol2, I finally can meet most of my friends again… This is one of the most complete gathering in this year for me :D It wasn’t a complete set of people (missing helios the photographer, Christian the model, WK, Ivana, Ocvia, Handarmin, etc), but it was big enough for the restaurant to give us a VIP room – a room only for us!


Happy Birthday, F4!

We went to 7107 Flavours, a Philippines restaurant located at Marina Square. The name is given based on the number of island in Philippines. It was the first time I heard about Philippines food. My impression for 7107 flavours? 0 for the service but 100 for the food! All the dishes are so nyummy! And man it’s spicy. So my taste. That might be the reason why the place is so crowded despite its high price (average dishes priced at $20) and its lousy services. Talk about service. They brought wrong dish (and took it back after 10 mins), wrong drink (ordered green mango juice and came as mango blend), slow service (Nancy’s drink only came after we finished the food), and (some) not so friendly looking waiter who kept asking for tips. I might not be going back to the restaurant, until I learn how to speak tagalog.


7107 - Love the food!

After the dinner, we went back home and tried to sleep early for the trekking on the next morning. Despite continuous warning from Che, we still started 1 hour late from the planned =_=’ Well… nothing new. We started from the Marang Trail (Purple trail) and marked our finish line at Canopy Walk (green trail). It’s an achievement, k! But it doesn’t feel that exhaustive as the Macritchie. I guess the distance was hardly half from Macritchie.


The Sunday morning trail

Back to home, I’m all sleepy & moody. After getting Mystery Box from Restaurant City, I decided to take a nap… until 6.30 PM! V_V Then went to Anchor Point to enjoy a 1-to-1 Special Steak treat from Jack’s Place. It was sinful and I love it to the max!

After dinner, we watched “The girl with dragon tattoo”. Too bad we started late and didn’t manage to finish the whole movie. Time is showing as 12.30 now. Start of a new week in a new month… and wait… it’s the week of long weekend!

Happy Hallowen Day!
ED

The Black Evaluation Day

I would like to capture my emotions.. well.. while I’m really on the peak of it.. :)

It was 9 PM, Friday night. It’s the last day of October, where we have a milestone to meet & documents to be delivered. So I stayed in the office & tried to finish my work before leaving for the day. Anyway my boyfriend is as well working and I don’t have other plan for the day.

Remember how I mentioned last few weeks that my boss has been kept asking me to go home early? Well, he lost his patience towards me today & this incident happened.

In front of my other team members, he shouted at me. “What are you doing in the office!? I have told you so many times. You leave now or I’m reducing your grade by 2!” (What a coincidence that day was assessment day & he seems to be really serious)

Being a normal human being, I defended myself and told him that today is the deadline for an important milestone in our project & we need to get it ready before Monday. He disagreed with my approached of staying late and doing the administrative work of sending files to TCS. He said I should have left it with my team members in Germany since it’s anyway only 3PM for them & it’s already 9PM for us. He explained how I should learn on getting help from other team members rather than taking everything to myself. He accused of how I’m working hard but not smart.

The worse part? After his 5 minutes speech, I didn’t know what to do… so I promised that I will leave in another 15 minutes after finishing the work I’m doing half way. He isn’t that easily satisfied.

He called up my team member in Germany to take up my work!! He even linked me in to the call when he got agreement from the other team member to finish what I’m doing.

I’m so embarrassed that I almost cried on the spot. I don’t understand where I have done so wrong, that he decided to do this to me. I stayed late but I come to office on time in the morning. I hardly took taxi so I don’t think the problem is with the claim. I completed my work & I don’t believe if there is any escalation saying that I’m sleeping on my work. So what was the reason that he decided to embarrass me in public, and taking my performance evaluation grades to threaten me?

I lost my peace to do my work after the incident, and decided to call it a day. I went back & unfortunately, can’t stop the tears on my way home.

I always know that this incident will hit me, sooner or latter. I got so many reminders but thought that those are trivial. I’m just one big stubborn employee after all. And I appraised my boss for his well-done approach in giving me a lesson.

There goes one black Friday.
ED

The Not-So-Fun Working Week

In the new seating arrangement, I am left stranded on level 2, while the rest of my team is down at level 1. I thought it will be fun to work with no team member watching you... But I’m proven wrong. They called me down almost every half an hour! +_+

It was another long working hours week, but I didn’t feel productive :( So many meetings and discussions, with zero time to do the actual work. So many running here and there, I sometime can’t even remember what I went down for.

So on Friday, when I packed my stuff again for my final move, I actually feel quite happy. It might not turn out to be the best seat, but at least I will be around the other team member and discussion is just a matter of rolling my chair around.


Bye, my one-week-old new seat!

This week, we kicked-off the exercise class again in office. I completed 2 exercises + 1 yoga this week (which lead to the pain in my stomach this weekend). And! this week seems to be a favourite week for celebration. 2 team dinner, 2 farewells, 2 birthday parties… these are another causes on why I’m not very productive this week =.=’ There is one day that I spent 1 hour for breakfast, 2 hours for lunch, and another hour for dinner, that I literally wasting 50% of my office time. Hahaha… I hope things will be better next week…


My 18th years old colleague making his b’day wish :)

On Saturday, we finally completed the movie Detective Dee. I’m very very satisfied with the movie :) Finally Andy Lau played a good role in an awesome movie again :D it was mysterious and interesting from the start until the very end… one of the rare Chinese movies which worth watching in cinema!

In the evening, despite the heavy rain weather forecast, we decided to pay a visit to Marina I Light (I hope they wont get to dispute with Apple later on), the so called “Asia’s First sustainable Light Art Festival”. I enjoyed the 4-km walk a lot :) Maybe it’s because of the cooling weather and the nice exhibition, but I too believe that the most important one was the companions. We started after the dinner @ Xing Wang Taiwan Café. We walked and snapped and laughed so hard that I really felt hungry again at the end of the walk. Seriously.


Me promoting Marina I Light :D Notice the head behind!


The 4 bestest companion @ somewhere I never been before :) Theme: Staircase

Sunday, I decided to just stay at home and complain about my leg pain :) it was a good cozy weather outside and the sky is cleared from haze. Yay! Thanks to the rain earlier in the morning. Even though it comes at the cost of wetting my laundry… again!!

Ok, time to take a little nap before dinner… :p
ED

Please rain!

The weather is so unforgiving these days! It’s hot to max! To the degree that I rather ate in canteen and quickly went back to cozy office rather than hunting good food somewhere else. What funny is, I happened to check the weather forecast on those days… and it always forecasted that it would rain the next day… even weather forecast team can be wishful. Haha.

The only day it rains this week is… today. Sunday morning. When I decided to swim! When I washed my cloths the previous night! This is what we call luck T_T

This week has been… er… better compared with last week. Yes I still have the OT which I guess will never end… and I kept getting request from everyone else when my boss is not around :( It’s not a celebration when your boss went for a business trip. You have to cover part of his work also, while he enjoyed himself in the mesmerizing Abu Dhabi under company expense. Jealous! (Ok, to be fair to him, he has a big responsibility there, too)

I don’t know what happened, but my boss never failed to text / email me every single day, asking me to go home earlier. +_+ I can think lots of positive & negative reasons, but I decided to take it just as it is.

On Friday, I hardly work for 4 hours. There is a seat reallocation happening in my office, and lots of people busy packing and throwing stuffs. Due to that too, all of us need to shutdown our computer at 6pm. That’s a very good news for me :p I finally got a valid excuse to leave office early.

That night, Glen and I have made appointment to meet Venny and Linh at 7pm. Glen was so afraid to be late (and irritated by how slow I’m) that he decided to help me do my packing XD Thank you Glen! In the end, we reached the restaurant second (after Winson, thanks for helping us queue!), and it was another 10 mins before Venny and Linh came out. It was a fun dinner… and would have been perfect if I wasn’t interrupted by conference call at 9pm :( After dinner, we had some yogurt at level B1, and then went back to home.

Saturday, I went out together with Inche.. I can’t remember when the last time I met her was! Feel like so out of loop with all my friends out there… and I guess I have myself to blame. I rejected all sports invitation and went missing when they went for dinner. She doesn’t change abit :) and we had good time at Marina Bay Square… I got all the things I wanted :D including a new working shoes and lip gloss. Thanks for being an awesome shopping partner, Che! It was only before we departed that I realized we haven’t taken any picture… in the end, we took one shot in the MRT station ^^;


The Two Ex-Roomie :p

Sunday is my lazy day… I still have some ironing to be done, but have no mood to start off :p Tonight I’m going to Bishan to meet Nova… :)

Ok, would like to close this blog with a mention of the movie I watch yesterday: The Legend of Chen Zhen. Until the end of the movie, I was still trying to figure out what the main story is.

Eat, Sleep, Sweat,
ED

Fitness First

I’m back to SG! (again) Safe and sound! The 4-day in India has been quite an eye opener for me. You will never know how lucky you’re until you are countered with something… erm… worse.

I chanted almost every week on how I had to work long hours and attend late night calls. What I didn’t know is, there are my colleagues who work throughout every weekend and attend mid night (4 am) calls. And I got a chance to experience the same when I was in Bangalore. My comment? Tireedddd!!

I dont' understand how they survive that kind of life style. It was 9.30 AM on Sunday when I was dragged to office. By the time I finally reached back hotel & fell to bed, it was 2 AM. The next day, I woke up at 6.00 AM as the meeting planned at 7.00 AM. Mummy!!! It didn’t do any good to me. Despite having a very nice local-brewed coffee, I still felt very moody due to lack of sleep. I reached back hotel at 11.30 PM on Monday and decided to sleep straight away. I fekt better the next day as I woke up at 5 AM to pack. When I went down to the café for breakfast, my colleagues were telling me they didn’t really sleep due to deployment issues. They seemed to be living only by coffee.

So I worked until 7pm on Tuesday, then went to airport, accompanied with multiple calls in the taxi. I thought I could get some sleep in car. What a wishful thinking :( When I actually got seated in the plane, I was so tired that I considered skipping the supper... (but took it anyway in the end)

Touched down at 6 AM, I then get some sleep and went to office at 12 PM. I felt good to be back to somewhere I’m familiar with… to a place where I can come and go whenever I want… I love my SG office! (am I going mad?) Anyway, we had our monthly forum on Wednesday, and weekly call on Thursday. I was kind of worried that I would be spending my Friday in office again, but thanks to the gank who ensure it didn’t happen :)

I went to watch a hindi movie: Enthiran… which translated to English as “The Robot”. How should I rate the movie? I felt that they overdid some of the effects, but apart from that… it was a good mix of tension and humour. The heroine is too pretty that it's almost unrealistic for her to fall in love with the 61 years old hero. Haha… Anyway, it’s really a good movie. Thanks, Sapna, for the wonderful treat! I just know that it’s 15 bucks for Hindi movie in cinema… That’s 50% more expensive than Hollywood movie.

On Saturday, I went back to office for… lunch @ Aston’s! haha.. It was quite empty in Maple tree area, but I still met 4 colleagues who are working over weekend. Duh! The food & the service are good. I love their side dishes the best. Very generous =)


BBQ Chicken + 2 Side Dishes for $6.9!

At night, we watch Sex and the city II, which is more like Abu Dhabi Tourism Board + Fashion show. It did make me wanted to go to Abu Dhabi… But only if I’m treated first class like them :p I want to have my own butler!

The next day, I went to Fitness First @ ORQ for my trial class… I’m quite impressed with their facilities… complete equipments + free training attire + free drinks + sauna & steam. I must admit that they might be one of the best fitness center around…. But it’s like SGD 133 / month T_T how… I checked with my roomie and she said that NTU only charged SGD40. That’s quite lots of difference. They said they are building a new branch near maple tree next year, which will be very near for me… Well, I will see if I have a motivation to join. I am already half dead with 2 hours treadmill and cycling.


At Fitness First, North Tower Level 8 - It has awesome view!

After fitness, we went to Ayam Penyet for lunch. It was almost 3 PM, but the place is still so crowded! Amazing. After lunch, I came back home, did some ironing, and slept until dinner time (now tell me how can I get slimmer) After dinner, now it’s time for… another movie! Hahaha..

Happy Binary Day, 101010,
ED

Back to work!

This is my first week start working again after the two weeks break. As usual, I was anxious for the ‘first’ day… and trapped myself into a sleepless on the Sunday night =_=; Sometimes I’m just amazed with myself… How can I still feel so anxious after being in the same company for more than two years? ~.~

Luckily, I can still wake up fresh the next day. I reached office at 9.30 AM, and glad that everything was still looking somehow familiar. I did my routine: cleaning up my cup, booting up my computer, and playing a little game of guessing number of mails from the past 2 weeks. I was relieved as I saw 3 digit numbers instead of 4… and yes, my inbox size was still within limits. I spent the next couple of hours screening through my mails, then went to say hi to my boss - which I regretted later on - as he started to give me more work T_T I should have pretended that I didn’t see him, at least for the first day.

Anyway, first day passed quite well :) One thing I noticed was, after around 15 days away from computer, my eyes gets tired easily. It felt burnt after 8 hrs. Normally it won’t even bulge for 24 hrs, especially during those university days :)

This week, we watched How I meet your mother, Big Bang Theory, and stated with Glee. I decided to watch Glee after hearing so many good reviews + getting the downloaded file from my roomate :p It was a good first impression on its pilot episode.

Watching Glee makes me realized how much time has passed in my life. I used to watch those high school theme movies and dream of experiencing those moments myself. I used to read the biography of the actors, admired how good they are, and gave myself an encouragement “Of course, they are twenties. When I’m their age, I will have these talents too!”

Fast forward, now I’m watching high school movie & realized I have missed the stage. I can’t even have myself admiring the lead actor anymore. And now when I look at their profile… oh my! Are these people really same age as me? And some even 5 years younger than me? Since when I’m aging so fast? It used to be the world of Spice Girls, The Moffats, Boyzone, Backstreet boys. All in sudden, it’s all about Sean Kingston, Justin Bieber, Taylor swift, Charice, Wonder girls, Twilight… ~.~ Gosh I’m so out!

OK, coming back to work and reality now!

On Thursday, I had the normal 9pm weekly call in the office. Was trying to find some friends for dinner at 6.30pm but can’t find any... (how can they all decided to ditch me on the same day T_T) so decided to take this opportunity for my diet.
Friday, I was suddenly overloaded with work. I don’t know what my bosses were up too. They started briefing me with new stuff at 7pm, and said it can be done anytime before Monday. Before Monday? I was speechless. There goes my Friday night. I stayed in office until 1.30am before deciding to come back on the next day.

Saturday, I can’t sleep well and decided to wake up at 10am. After lunch, I went to office & came back at 6pm. Next thing I know, I was in flight to Bangalore and now alone in Vivanta Hotel. I am still clueless how I ended up here for my weekend, but next week will definitely be another thrilling week.


Playing with the Touch Screen Phone

Meet again, Benguluru!
ED

… and the holiday continues

The next day after we touched down in Singapore, we proceed to Universal Studio. I felt that we have picked the best day to come. The place is almost empty! Imagine that you don’t have to queue for any attractions! And that all the characters are out to take pics with you? The most worthwhile $66 we paid for! Hehe..


The Panda is so fluffy ^^

After the whole day in Universal Studio, we had dinner at Baits before going back to home. I was all wet due to the Dino’s ride, and not feeling very well at night. After some consideration, I cancelled my Thursday flight back to Medan. I don’t want to go back and just spreading virus around my family. Good bye Nasi Padang :’( Good bye Nasi Goreng Pekantan :’( My Sate Padang :’( (and good bye $80 for the rescheduling fee. Haha..) I decided that it might be the best for me... as I have tons of stuff to do in SG too (including updating my abandoned blog) Plus the fact that I need to be fit to embrace my two-week-stack of work next week :)

On the last day of my brother in SG, we celebrated princess Aurelie b’day one day in advance, and then went to City hall for the last stop. Well, I sort of picking the wrong day for City Hall. Almost all the routes are inaccessible, thanks to the upcoming F1. We’re stuck in the traffic for so long, and it took forever to get a taxi. All in all, we still managed to accomplish our mission of seeing esplanade, touching fountain of wealth, having Indian’s fish head curry, buying some cloths, getting a digital frame, and reaching back hotel on time for the airport :)


Happy Birthday Princess Aurelie!


I can’t get away from Indian food!

The check-in in airport is a thrilling moment for all of us. With the luggage allowance of only 40 kg (for 2 people), my dear brother have at least 90 kg of luggage in total. Don’t ask me what they have bought. Haha.. Thanks God, the flight is not full on that day, and they meet a very kind two guys assisting them. Plus the charm of the princess, the luggage passed the check without overweight penalty. What a relief! I love Singapore Airlines! :D Muach.


… Till we meet again!

After the check-in, we have a goodbye hug and they went in to the departure hall, and I went to bugis for dinner (later on, I learnt that they again bought some perfume + liquor + food in the departure hall. Hah). Winson and I went to Nando’s for dinner, and then going back to Suntec because we left the thumbdrive in Harvey Norman when we tested the digital frame. The journey to and from Suntec was a nightmare due to the F1 preparation. I didn’t really want to remember it. I’m really sorry for all the troubles :( We started at 8.30 and reach back home only at almost 11pm.


First time at Nando’s! Love the peri-peri sauce :D

Thursday finally marks the real holiday for me :p I slept until 12 and started to tidy up my stuff through out the day. In addition, I did some laundry and swept off some dust from my blog. Haha. At night, we watch Ip Man 3, which was quite a nice movie, comparable to it's first and sequel.

Friday, I again slept until 12 (that’s the real me!) then start to mess around with pictures (burning, zipping, resizing, picking, sending, etc) and blog about the Japan trip. I washed my blanket but alas, it was raining hard and failed to dry T_T for night movie session, we went for Liar Game! Finally :D We were guessing from the very beginning that the 13th round will result in all red apples, and it really did. I like the ending where the old uncle actually returned the 1000 yen to her!

After the movie, I decided to tidy up my iPhone address book (which was one destroyed during the iphone upgrade) and didn’t stop until… 5am =_=’’ After cleaning up my contacts, I was left with 185 numbers which I deemed required. That’s all for my 23 years of life? The painful point was to put the birthday date in each of the contacts. Ha! Now I won’t forget any birthday! :D

Saturday, I slept until 12pm, then cleaned up the room & toilet before going for shower. It was raining when we wanted to go for lunch, so we decided to go for instant noodle :p after lunch, I felt sleepy (maybe due to medication), and slept until 5pm =.=’. I can’t believe how piggy I’m! There is no much time left for Saturday, so I just sent a mail to my sister, then went to Suntec to experience the sounds of F1. Man it was a torture for the ears *.* After dinner + some shopping, we came back and in time for the qualifying round (Thanks, Channel 5!) I like the TV seat much better, without rain and the sound. When the F1 is done, we continued with Big Bang Theory Season 3 (how I love September!) And slept after forwarding some photos to mum and dad.

Sunday, I woke up at 7.30 AM. Not that I'm finally enlighten for good sleeping habit and redeem myself overnight, but for a 2-month-planned ice cream making lesson! After doing some laundry, I headed to Tom’s Pallate for the lesson :) It was a 2-hrs lesson. 25 minutes of demo, 25 minutes of trying out, and another hour for tasting :D I like the last part the best :D haha... My lesson learnt? Making ice cream is not easy... and not cheap also (especially when you have funny flavour) So stop complaining about the price of the ice cream! After the class, we went to Ayam Penyet for lunch, then come back home at almost 4pm.


Despite the word 'common', I have none of the ingredients / utensils. Not my piece of cake T_T

I feel like sleeping now, but if I sleep... I don't know if I ever gonna wake up anymore today ><... so maybe I will just hold it until early evening... hmm.. which movie should I pick now? :P

F1 Final today!
ED